


Twin Souls

by blackkat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Drabble Collection, Gen, Non-Chronological, and Canon Character Death too i suppose, canon character "death"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 03:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5191241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>According to the Bingo Book, Hatake Kakashi has two dæmons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

According to the Bingo Book, Hatake Kakashi has two dæmons.

Everyone has their own theory to explain it. Kakashi has heard some people say that the two are actually one, that it’s a single dæmon in separate bodies. Or that they're the result of two souls trapped in one body. Or that some strange sorcery allowed him to bind the dæmon of a fallen foe to his own soul, thereby increasing his power.

Some people remember, but they don’t speak of it. His old classmates at the Academy, those who knew him when he was a genin and a chuunin, they know the reason, or at least have guessed at it with more accuracy than anyone else. They remember Kannabi Bridge, Obito, a thirteen-year-old jounin with a new eye and a team one member short. They remember a boy leaving the village with a dragon dæmon coiled around his throat and coming back with a dragon gliding beside him and a fenghuang on his shoulder.

Before he killed her, Rin suggested that it was because of Kakashi having Obito's eye that Fūraimatsu was able to survive. It’s as good an idea as any, so it’s generally what Kakashi lets himself believe. Obito had wanted to see the future with him, and so he’d left Kakashi his Sharingan and his dæmon, though Kakashi can't say which gift is the heavier burden. Because the eye is one thing, but—

But Fūraimatsu is a piece of Obito's soul, the only piece remaining in this world, and the care of her falls to Kakashi now.

Kakashi can't think of a single thing that could be more terrifying.


	2. Chapter 2

Shinobi dæmons settle early, as a rule.

Fūraimatsu is no different, at least in that regard. She settles on Obito's fifth birthday, when the cold winds howl outside of the empty house that holds only Obito, and they huddle together in the smallest room, hoping the heat will stay there and not dissipate. They are alone, as always, because they have no parents, have never known any, and even if the clan does not wish to take them in they’ll hardly allow a clan child, with the possibility of possessing the Sharingan, be placed in an orphanage.

So Obito has a house to himself at the age of nearly-five, to himself and Fūraimatsu, who shifts from bear to wolf to falcon to fox, trying to release as much body heat as possible while Obito presses close and wishes for summer to return. He does not think of it as his birthday, which is hardly a happy occasion, and Fūraimatsu does not mention it, either. But she’s growing angry, huffing and hissing as a fox, growling as a bear, and then—

(Obito is imagining what the older Uchiha children are doing right now, close by their families and tucked away safe in warm homes, and feels something icy and resigned settle in his chest, his gut.

 _I have to fight for that,_ he thinks, and it is not a thought that a just-barely-five-year-old should have, but Obito has been alone but for Fūraimatsu for as long as he can remember, and _should_ no longer applies to him. _No one will ever simply give it to me. I will have to fight for it every day of my life, and prove that I have_ earned _it.)_

And then the small room is suddenly filled with the blazing heat of the midsummer sun, the kind of warmth that reaches right to the bone and wrenches out the cold completely. The change is so sudden that Obito yelps, flinching back a little and lifting his head to stare at his dæmon. She looks just as surprised as he feels, steady in a shape they’ve never even attempted before, but it’s…

“Beautiful,” Obito breathes, and Fūraimatsu always is, always manages to be lovely regardless of Obito's awkwardness, but this is something different. She’s a bird, large and elegant, with a long neck and a delicate head, wise black eyes and feathers that glimmer with black, white, red, blue and yellow. Wide wings and a long tail fill the small room and Obito, all of just-barely-five, knows that without a doubt she is the most splendid creature on the face of the earth, even if he has no name for what she is.

“Really?” Fūraimatsu asks, craning her head around to survey her new body. There's a different feeling to her now, something steady, and Obito doesn’t need to ask to know that she’ll hold this form until the very end of their lives.

“Really,” he affirms with a wide and beaming grin, and opens his arms for her. She flutters into them, graceful and deft, and allows Obito to wrap her in a tight embrace.

“Happy birthday, Obito,” she murmurs.

Obito smiles, and murmurs right back, “Happy birthday, Rai.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place directly after Chp. 2

When they slip out the door the next morning, into the busy courtyard, there's an instant and deafening hush. Obito glances up to see that everyone within sight is staring at them, humans and dæmons alike. Fūraimatsu flutters nervously, perched on Obito's shoulder and nearly as big as he is, and Obito wavers. A very large part of him wants to run back inside his house, huddle there with Fūraimatsu until everyone just stops _looking_ , but even at five Obito is not a coward. He squares his shoulders, tangles his fingers in Fūraimatsu’s beautiful tail feathers, and leaves the Uchiha compound at his usual run.

But the stares don’t stop when he leaves, even if they do become slightly friendlier.

Old lady Haruka is the first one to actually _say_ something, though. Obito is carrying her bags, because she always tries to sneak out and do the shopping before her son can wake up—tradition, she insists. She did it to her late husband, too.

Obito thinks she’s a senile old bat, but she just laughs whenever he tells her that.

“A fenghuang,” she tells him as he struggles with her ten pounds of cat food and ridiculous amount of red bean paste. “A huang, to be specific—that’s what you call the female ones. Very special birds indeed.”

All of the Uchiha have bird dæmons; that’s how it’s been since the clan was founded. In this, at least, Obito is conforming, though somehow he doubts Fugaku-sama will see it like that. After all, _no one_ has a dæmon in the form of a magical creature. Dragons, phoenixes, tanuki, kitsune—dæmons don’t take those shapes.

But Fūraimatsu has.


	4. Chapter 4

Tianlong has always been a little strange, was even before she settled. She’s the part of Kakashi that he pushes down and tries to hide, forces out of mind, and it puts them at odds.

Kakashi's never met anyone else who managed to set themselves at odds with their dæmon, but he’s always been special like that.

She settles late—far later than Kakashi feels she should. No one ever has a concrete answer as to when or why dæmons settle, though most tend to think it has something to do with growing up and leaving childhood behind. But if that’s the case, Kakashi can't understand why Tianlong doesn’t settle when he’s six years old, staring down at the body of his father in a pool of blood.

Surely, surely, after than he’s left every bit of childishness and childlike behavior far behind him.

But instead, Tianlong keeps shifting, even though she favors the shape of a long, lean dragon over any other. She rarely deigns to perch anywhere on Kakashi, the way most dæmons do, and instead hovers in the air, circling and drifting like a piece of silk caught in the wind. Her scales shimmer a deep pearl-grey, warm and cool in the same moment, and the jewel on her chest glows like the full moon. People exclaim over her, speak in hushed whispers as they pass, because she’s beautiful.

She’s beautiful, and Kakashi has no idea why.

(Kakashi is thirteen when she shifts for the final time, grey-brown wolf to silver dragon, with Obito dead before him. The rocks close in with rumble that shakes Kakashi right down to his bones, and Tianlong _screams_ , whirling up from four-legged form in a twisting death-dance, her cry rattling the stones. Something inside Kakashi screams with her, even as a blur of fiery color slams into his chest and he clutches at silken-soft feathers for the very first time. Fūraimatsu keens, high and hurt and desolate, and Kakashi wants to cry but can't.

He still doesn’t understand, not the way he should, but—

There is no going back from this. There is no recovery, and no return to what they used to be.

Kakashi is used to grief, to pain. But somehow he still thinks that nothing has ever ached more than this final, definitive shift.)


End file.
